WORD HISTORY: Fey

The history of the words fey and fay illustrates a rather fey coincidence. Our word fay, "fairy, elf," the descendant of Middle English faie, "a person or place possessed of magical properties," and first recorded around 1390, goes back to Old French fae, "fairy," the same word that has given us fairy. Fae in turn comes from Vulgar Latin Fata, "the goddess of fate," from Latin fatum, "fate." If fay goes back to fate, so does fey in a manner of speaking, for its Old English ancestor faege meant "fated to die." The sense we are more familiar with, "magical or fairylike in quality," seems to have arisen partly because of the resemblance in sound between fay and fey.